Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 158

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Before I share this week’s links: yes, I am aware that Antho­ny Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court and think it is like­ly to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal devel­op­ments of my life­time. I don’t have any links about it because not much inter­est­ing has been writ­ten about it yet sim­ply because Trump has not nom­i­nat­ed a suc­ces­sor yet. Once he does, please let me know if you find any­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about either his nom­i­nee or the process.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sus­pect in Stan­ford church mur­der kills self (Palo Alto Dai­ly News): this is a trag­ic and freaky sto­ry. A less hor­rif­ic detail which amused me: “Craw­ford stayed on at Stan­ford until 1976, but he found ways to exact revenge against the uni­ver­si­ty, Her­hold said. ‘He began steal­ing stuff from offices,’ said Her­hold, who added exam­ples, includ­ing a human skull, a walk­ing cane giv­en to uni­ver­si­ty founder Leland Stan­ford and rare books. ‘The kick­er was he went down to a print shop and got a degree from Stan­ford,’ he said, using a blank Stan­ford diplo­ma.”
  2. Ebo­la Deaths Rise As Patients Turn to Mir­a­cles Over Med­i­cine (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two Ebo­la patients died last month after flee­ing a hos­pi­tal iso­la­tion ward so they could be tak­en to a prayer meet­ing, where they exposed up to 50 oth­ers.” Wow. Bad the­ol­o­gy leads to tragedy. Some­body nev­er taught them Leviti­cus 13:46. If you’re infec­tious, pay atten­tion to the phrase “call for” in James 5:14–16 and ask the elders to come to you. Quar­an­tine Laws and the Bible (Lar­ry Ball, The Aquila Report) is worth read­ing in this regard.
  3. The Span­ish Inqui­si­tion Was a Mod­er­ate Court by the Stan­dard of Its Time (Ed Con­don, Nation­al Review): “Because it was a seri­ous court, metic­u­lous case files and court records were kept. Libraries in Tole­do, Sala­man­ca, and oth­er cities are home to thou­sands of such case files. In the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Hen­ry Kamen and oth­er his­to­ri­ans were giv­en access to them. What they dis­cov­ered changed the schol­ar­ly under­stand­ing of the Inqui­si­tion. So, what of those dank dun­geons and hot pok­ers? Well, for a start, the jails of the Inqui­si­tion were uni­ver­sal­ly known to be hygien­ic and well main­tained. They were nei­ther built nor run as places of pun­ish­ment. The stan­dard of care that inmates received was high enough that pris­on­ers held by the Crown would often peti­tion to be moved to Inqui­si­tion jails. There are record­ed cas­es of crim­i­nals com­mit­ting pub­lic heresy with the express pur­pose of being held and tried by the Inqui­si­tion, rather than the sec­u­lar courts.” This is not a fringe view among schol­ars, but is def­i­nite­ly con­trary to the pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion.
  4. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez on her Catholic faith and the urgency of a crim­i­nal jus­tice reform (Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Amer­i­ca): “By nature, a soci­ety that for­gives and reha­bil­i­tates its peo­ple is a soci­ety that for­gives and trans­forms itself. That takes a rad­i­cal kind of love, a secret of which is giv­en in the Lord’s Prayer: For­give us our tres­pass­es, as we for­give those who tres­pass against us. And let us not for­get the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of “the least among us” found in Matthew: that we are com­pelled to care for the hun­gry, thirsty, home­less, naked, sick and, yes—the impris­oned.” This, of course, is the social­ist can­di­date who unseat­ed pow­er­ful incum­bent Joe Crow­ley in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. She is almost cer­tain to become the youngest woman ever elect­ed to Con­gress.
    • Relat­ed: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca Mem­ber­ship Surges After Alexan­dria Ocasio-Cortez’s Stun­ning Vic­to­ry (Gideon Resnick, The Dai­ly Beast): “Accord­ing to Lawrence Drey­fuss, a pro­gram asso­ciate for DSA, the orga­ni­za­tion saw a surge of 1,152 new mem­ber­ships on Wednesday—about 35 times more sign-ups than on an aver­age day. The last major mem­ber­ship bump DSA expe­ri­enced was in the month fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s elec­tion, dur­ing which time they had about six times more sign-ups than in the pre­vi­ous month.” Note that the orga­ni­za­tion itself is still rel­a­tive­ly small (40,000 mem­bers).
    • Pos­si­bly relat­ed: Democ­rats are los­ing the mil­len­ni­al vote and need to change mes­sage (Cas Mud­de, The Guardian): “a recent Reuters/Ipsos mega poll of 16,000 respon­dents, found that the Democ­rats are los­ing ground with mil­len­ni­als. While mil­len­ni­als still pre­fer the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty over the Repub­li­cans, that sup­port is tank­ing. In just two years, it dropped sharply from 55% to 46%. Mean­while, their sup­port for Repub­li­cans has remained rough­ly sta­ble in the past two years, falling from 28% to 27%.… their dis­like of the Repub­li­cans should not be inter­pret­ed as a like of Democ­rats.” Caveats apply: this is based on the results of one poll.
    • Def­i­nite­ly relat­ed: Dear Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists Who Think You’re Hav­ing a Moment: It’s Me, a Lib­er­tar­i­an, Who’s Been Through This. (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, the ide­ol­o­gy with which Oca­sio-Cortez iden­ti­fies, appears to be hav­ing a polit­i­cal moment. To which I say, as a lib­er­tar­i­an who has been through the whole an-idea-whose-time-has-final­ly-come expe­ri­ence: good luck with that, com­rades. The signs are easy to mis­read.”
  5. Right-to-work laws make unions work hard­er for their mem­bers (Chris­tos Makridis, The Hill): “RTW [Right To Work] laws force unions to become more com­pet­i­tive. When unions are guar­an­teed a per­ma­nent income stream, they don’t need to work as hard to win the hearts and minds of their employ­ees; that is, they face weak­er incen­tives to pro­vide valu­able ser­vices. The adop­tion of RTW laws changes that by mak­ing union dues a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion.” Yes, this is our very own recent­ly-grad­u­at­ed Chris­tos.
  6. Are Satanists of the MS-13 gang an under-cov­ered sto­ry on the reli­gion beat? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of news com­men­tary. My favorite bit: “How does one get out of MS-13? An opin­ion piece in the New York Times this past April gives a sur­pris­ing response: Go to a Pen­te­costal church.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. How The Democ­rats Lost Their Way On Immi­gra­tion (Peter Bein­ert, The Atlantic): “Lib­er­als must take seri­ous­ly Amer­i­cans’ yearn­ing for social cohe­sion. To pro­mote both mass immi­gra­tion and greater eco­nom­ic redis­tri­b­u­tion, they must con­vince more native-born white Amer­i­cans that immi­grants will not weak­en the bonds of nation­al iden­ti­ty. This means dust­ing off a con­cept many on the left cur­rent­ly hate: assim­i­la­tion.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 157

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. These Har­vard Kids Got the Les­son of Their Lives in the Heart­land (Sale­na Zito, NY Post): “I have been a nation­al polit­i­cal jour­nal­ist for near­ly 15 years. When­ev­er and wher­ev­er I trav­el in this coun­try, I abide by a few sim­ple rules: No planes, no inter­states and no hotels. And def­i­nite­ly no chain restau­rants…. Those sim­ple rules are what intrigued stu­dents at the Har­vard Insti­tute of Pol­i­tics (IOP) after hear­ing me speak at a Piz­za and Pol­i­tics event on the school’s cam­pus last fall.”
  2. Don’t Quit the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Stay and Fight (Michael Wear, Time Mag­a­zine): “The prob­lem is that pol­i­tics is not an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic endeav­or. Inde­pen­dents tend to spurn insti­tu­tions gen­er­al­ly, and then feel vin­di­cat­ed when our insti­tu­tions do not reflect their views. But while Inde­pen­dents think they are send­ing polit­i­cal par­ties a mes­sage, polit­i­cal par­ties do not hear them…. In essence, Inde­pen­dents active­ly min­i­mize their impact on elec­tions and par­ty posi­tions. When peo­ple leave (or fail to join) par­ties in protest, they starve those par­ties of ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty, dri­ving them to their extremes.”
    • On Twit­ter the author (a for­mer Oba­ma White House staffer) says “The head­line is mis­lead­ing. My argu­ment is a cau­tion against becom­ing an indy. If you read the arti­cle, I explic­it­ly argue that if you believe the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty more close­ly aligns with your vision of what is best for our nation’s pol­i­tics, you should become a Demo­c­rat.” In case you didn’t know, authors rarely choose their head­lines (or even the titles of their books).
  3. When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gen­der-iden­ti­ty explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles.
  4. The Sin Of Silence (Joshua Pease, Wash­ing­ton Post): “With­out a cen­tral­ized the­o­log­i­cal body, evan­gel­i­cal poli­cies and cul­tures vary rad­i­cal­ly, and while some church lead­ers have worked to pre­vent abuse and harass­ment, many have not. The caus­es are man­i­fold: author­i­tar­i­an lead­er­ship, twist­ed the­ol­o­gy, insti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion, obliv­i­ous­ness about the prob­lem and, per­haps most shock­ing, a dimin­ish­ment of the trau­ma sex­u­al abuse cre­ates — espe­cial­ly sur­pris­ing in a church cul­ture that believes strong­ly in the sanc­ti­ty of sex…. Roger Canaff, a for­mer New York state pros­e­cu­tor who spe­cial­ized in child sex­u­al abuse, tells me that many wor­shipers he encoun­tered felt per­se­cut­ed by the sec­u­lar cul­ture around them — and dis­in­clined to reach out to their per­se­cu­tors for help in solv­ing prob­lems.”
  5. Con­tra Caplan On Arbi­trary Deplor­ing (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “This is my long-wind­ed answer to a ques­tion sev­er­al peo­ple asked on the last links post – why should we pri­or­i­tize respond­ing to China’s mass incar­cer­a­tion of the Uighurs? Aren’t there oth­er equal­ly bad things going on else­where in the world, like malar­ia? Yes. But I had opti­misti­cal­ly thought we had most­ly estab­lished a strong norm around ‘don’t put minori­ties in con­cen­tra­tion camps’. Resources devot­ed to enforc­ing that norm won’t just solve the imme­di­ate prob­lem in Chi­na, they’ll also help main­tain a cred­i­ble taboo against this kind of thing so it’s less like­ly to hap­pen the next time.”
  6. The Hand­maids of Cap­i­tal­ism (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Fem­i­nists were divid­ed over sur­ro­ga­cy and com­mer­cial­ized fer­til­i­ty, but the oppo­si­tion to both prac­tices grad­u­al­ly dis­solved, and now only eccen­tric con­ser­v­a­tives notice the weird resem­blances between Cal­i­for­nia-style sur­ro­ga­cy prac­tices and the hand­maids and econowives of Gilead. They were divid­ed over pornog­ra­phy, often bit­ter­ly — but over time the sex-pos­i­tive side increas­ing­ly won out over the Andrea Dworkin­ish dis­senters, even as the online realm was over­run with images and videos that more than jus­ti­fied her argu­ments. They were, and are, divid­ed over pros­ti­tu­tion, but it’s pret­ty clear that the ver­sion of fem­i­nism that sup­ports the rights of sex work­ers to sell their bod­ies in the mar­ket­place has the intel­lec­tu­al momen­tum.”
  7. More on bor­der fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tions, a pol­i­cy that has been stopped by exec­u­tive order after mas­sive pub­lic out­cry.
    • The Less­er Cru­el­ty On Immi­gra­tion (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “it would be use­ful for every­one if the Trump White House just admit­ted that this pol­i­cy was con­ceived as a deter­rent — trau­ma­tiz­ing a cer­tain num­ber of fam­i­lies in the hopes of bring­ing greater order to the bor­der in the long run. That admis­sion would get us clos­er to the hard prob­lem in migra­tion pol­i­cy. Some harsh­ness, some deter­rence, real­ly is unavoid­able in any immi­gra­tion sys­tem that doesn’t sim­ply dis­solve bor­ders. So pol­i­cy­mak­ers are there­fore oblig­ed to choose tol­er­a­ble cru­el­ties over the intol­er­a­ble one that we’re wit­ness­ing in action right now.”
    • Immi­gra­tion: Was A.G. Ses­sions Right to Quote the Bible in Defense of Fam­i­ly Sep­a­ra­tion? (Bruce Ash­ford, per­son­al blog): “Paul is say­ing, in effect, ‘Look, it’s true that Jesus is the ulti­mate Ruler of a cos­mic King­dom while Cae­sar is only the tem­po­rary ruler of a lim­it­ed earth­ly king­dom. But that doesn’t mean you’re above the law. You should be a good cit­i­zen and obey the law except, of course, when God’s law con­flicts with Caesar’s law.’”
    • A case study in the prop­er role of Chris­tians in pol­i­tics (Michael J. Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In the case of child sep­a­ra­tion, some of the most effec­tive resis­tance has come from reli­gious lead­ers — Catholic, Protes­tant main­line and even some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian (see Car­di­nal Tim­o­thy Dolan and Franklin Gra­ham). It was a case study in the prop­er and pos­i­tive role that reli­gion can play in our com­mon life.”
    • Enforce the Bor­der — Humane­ly (David Frum, The Atlantic): “Ille­gal immi­grants are com­mit­ting no moral wrong. They are doing what we might do in their place—as we, by defend­ing bor­ders, are doing what they would do if they were in ours. Like so many human insti­tu­tions, bor­ders are both arbi­trary and indis­pens­able. With­out them, there are no nations. With­out nations, there can be no democ­ra­cy and no lib­er­al­ism. John Lennon may imag­ine that with­out nations there will be only human­i­ty. More like­ly, with­out nations there will only be tribes.”
    • Our Debate On Ille­gal Immi­gra­tion Is A Nation­al Dis­as­ter (David Harsanyi, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The major­i­ty of kids in care of the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, most often teenagers, are appre­hend­ed because they’re here with­out any par­ents. It’s a grow­ing prob­lem. In 2013, a lit­tle few­er than 40,000 unac­com­pa­nied minors were appre­hend­ed by the Bor­der Patrol. That was a his­toric high. In 2016 there were near­ly 60,000. This year there are like­ly to be more than 80,000.”
    • Amer­i­can Fam­i­lies Should­n’t Be Sep­a­rat­ed, Either (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “Obvi­ous­ly, a case can be made for enforc­ing the bor­der, but delib­er­ate cru­el­ty is nev­er a good idea. Those chil­dren — inno­cent vic­tims all of them — will like­ly be trau­ma­tized for life…. If you agree with me on this, I’d like to push you one step fur­ther. It’s hor­ri­ble to forcibly sep­a­rate law­break­ing par­ents from their young chil­dren, but we do that to Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, too. Accord­ing to one 2010 study, more than 1.1 mil­lion men and 120,000 women in U.S. jails and pris­ons have chil­dren under the age of 17.” This is one of the most intrigu­ing things I read this week.
    • The Rise of the Amnesty Thugs (David Brooks, New York Times): “For cen­turies, con­ser­v­a­tives have repeat­ed a spe­cif­ic cri­tique against state pow­er. Sta­tism, con­ser­v­a­tives have argued, has a ten­den­cy to become bru­tal­ist and inhu­mane because a bureau­cra­cy can’t see or account for the com­plex­i­ty of real­i­ty. It tries to impose uni­form rules on the organ­ic intri­ca­cy of human rela­tion­ships. Sta­tist social engi­neer­ing projects cause hor­rif­ic suf­fer­ing because in the mind of sta­tists, the abstract rule is more impor­tant than the human being in front of them. The per­son must be crushed for the sake of the abstrac­tion.” Astute insights in this op-ed. Rec­om­mend­ed. Also, the title is slight­ly mis­lead­ing.
    • A Twit­ter thread from an immi­gra­tion attor­ney explain­ing how long­stand­ing this prob­lem has been

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 156

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Also, 156 is three sets of 52, which means I’ve been doing this for a lit­tle over three years now (I some­times take a week or two off). Yay!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mr. Rogers Had a Sim­ple Set of Rules for Talk­ing to Chil­dren (Maxwell King, The Atlantic): “1. ‘State the idea you wish to express as clear­ly as pos­si­ble, and in terms preschool­ers can under­stand.’ Exam­ple: It is dan­ger­ous to play in the street. 2. “Rephrase in a pos­i­tive man­ner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe. 3. “Rephrase the idea, bear­ing in mind that preschool­ers can­not yet make sub­tle dis­tinc­tions and need to be redi­rect­ed to author­i­ties they trust.” As in, Ask your par­ents where it is safe to play.” There are sev­er­al more rules, most equal­ly good for talk­ing to adults.
  2. The Lifes­pan of a Lie (Ben Blum, Medi­um): “The appeal of the Stan­ford prison exper­i­ment seems to go deep­er than its sci­en­tif­ic valid­i­ty, per­haps because it tells us a sto­ry about our­selves that we des­per­ate­ly want to believe: that we, as indi­vid­u­als, can­not real­ly be held account­able for the some­times rep­re­hen­si­ble things we do.” The arti­cle claims, con­vinc­ing­ly, that the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment did not hap­pen at all the way we have been taught. Wow.
  3. When Diver­si­ty Means Uni­for­mi­ty (Lionel Shriv­er, The Spec­ta­tor): “Will Nor­man, London’s ‘walk­ing and cycling com­mis­sion­er’, bemoaned the fact that too many cyclists in the city are white, male and mid­dle-class. ‘The real chal­lenge for Lon­don cycling,’ he declared, ‘is diver­si­ty.’ As opposed to build­ing more cycle lanes for every­body, or fix­ing pot­holes lethal to everybody’s wheel rims, Nor­man regards his prin­ci­pal func­tion as increas­ing black and minor­i­ty eth­nic rid­er­ship.” This anec­dote is not the focus of the arti­cle.
  4. Of Boys and Toys (Leonard Sax, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “…they found that lit­tle children—boys especially—had bare­ly a clue which gen­der they belonged to, even when the psy­chol­o­gists used the sim­plest non­ver­bal prompts. Kids under two years of age score only slight­ly above chance in assign­ing them­selves or oth­er kids to the cor­rect gen­der. Nev­er­the­less, Serbin’s group found that children’s toy pref­er­ences are firm­ly in place by this age, espe­cial­ly among boys. When the exper­i­menters offered boys a truck or a doll, most boys chose the truck. In fact, boys pre­ferred trucks over dolls more strong­ly than girls pre­ferred dolls over trucks. That ought to be sur­pris­ing if you buy into gen­der schema the­o­ry because 18-month-old girls were more like­ly than boys to be able to clas­si­fy them­selves and oth­er chil­dren by gen­der. If gen­der schema the­o­ry is cor­rect, the girls should show a stronger pref­er­ence for gen­der-typ­i­cal toys because girls this age are more like­ly to know that they are, in fact, girls. But the real­i­ty is just the oppo­site.”
  5. Har­vard Rat­ed Asian-Amer­i­can Appli­cants Low­er on Per­son­al­i­ty Traits, Law­suit Says (Hadley Green, New York Times): “They com­pare Harvard’s treat­ment of Asian-Amer­i­cans with its well-doc­u­ment­ed cam­paign to reduce the grow­ing num­ber of Jews being admit­ted to Har­vard in the 1920s. Until then, appli­cants had been admit­ted on aca­d­e­m­ic mer­it. To avoid adopt­ing a bla­tant quo­ta sys­tem, Har­vard intro­duced sub­jec­tive cri­te­ria like char­ac­ter, per­son­al­i­ty and promise. The plain­tiffs call this the ‘orig­i­nal sin of holis­tic admis­sions.’” What are the odds they are the only high­ly-selec­tive uni­ver­si­ty to do this?
  6. Con­ser­v­a­tive Reli­gious Lead­ers Are Denounc­ing Trump Immi­gra­tion Poli­cies (Lau­rie Good­stein, New York Times): “A coali­tion of evan­gel­i­cal groups, includ­ing the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals and the Coun­cil for Chris­t­ian Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties, sent a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Trump on June 1 plead­ing with him to pro­tect the uni­ty of fam­i­lies and not to close off all avenues to asy­lum for immi­grants and refugees flee­ing dan­ger.”
    • Relat­ed: World Refugee Day 2018: ‘Wel­com­ing the Stranger’ Meets ‘Zero Tol­er­ance’ (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Chris­tians, the issue of fam­i­ly uni­ty for immi­grants shows signs of tran­scend­ing par­ti­san lines. Franklin Gra­ham, an evan­gel­i­cal advis­er to Pres­i­dent Trump, recent­ly spoke against fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion on CBN News, encour­ag­ing leg­isla­tive reform to rem­e­dy the new guide­lines for migrants at the bor­der.”
    • Relat­ed: She says fed­er­al offi­cials took her daugh­ter while she breast­fed the child in a deten­tion cen­ter (Ed Lavan­dera, Jason Mor­ris and Dar­ran Simon, CNN): “The undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Hon­duras sobbed as she told an attor­ney Tues­day how fed­er­al author­i­ties took her daugh­ter while she breast­fed the child in a deten­tion cen­ter, where she was await­ing pros­e­cu­tion for enter­ing the coun­try ille­gal­ly. When the woman resist­ed, she was hand­cuffed…” Bear in the mind that this is an alle­ga­tion, not a sub­stan­ti­at­ed event. I find it plau­si­ble.
  7. A com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 155

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Prob­lem with Dull Knives: What’s the Defense Depart­ment got to do with Code for Amer­i­ca? (Jen­nifer Pahlka, Medi­um): “I have a dis­tinct mem­o­ry of being a kid in the kitchen with my mom, awk­ward­ly and prob­a­bly dan­ger­ous­ly wield­ing a knife, try­ing to cut some tough veg­etable, and defend­ing my actions by say­ing the knife was dull any­way. My mom stopped me and said firm­ly, ‘Jen­ny, a dull knife is much more dan­ger­ous than a sharp knife. You’re strug­gling and using much more force than you should, and that knife is going to end up God Knows Where.’ She was right, of course…. But hav­ing poor tools [for the mil­i­tary] doesn’t make us fight less; it makes us fight bad­ly.” (some empha­sis in the orig­i­nal removed). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Num­ber One in Pover­ty, Cal­i­for­nia Isn’t Our Most Pro­gres­sive State — It’s Our Most Racist One (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Forbes): “If racism is more than just say­ing nasty things — if it is, as schol­ars like James Bald­win, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexan­der and count­less oth­ers have described, embed­ded into socioe­co­nom­ic struc­tures — then Cal­i­for­nia isn’t just the least pro­gres­sive state. It’s also the most racist.” Annoy­ing­ly split into sev­en sec­tions, but worth­while. The author was a guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date, but he did not make the gen­er­al elec­tion.
  3. This week the Supreme Court, in a 7–2 deci­sion, vin­di­cat­ed the Col­orado bak­er who refused to bake a cake for a gay wed­ding. A lot of ink was spilled in response:
    • Col­orado Made the Mas­ter­piece Case Easy for the Court (Robert P. George, New York Times): “This much, how­ev­er, is clear: Busi­ness own­ers and oth­ers have no oblig­a­tion under the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor can one be imposed by statute, to con­fine their reli­gion to the pri­vate domain. On the con­trary, they have the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­claim and act on their reli­gious beliefs in the pub­lic domain, includ­ing in the domain of com­merce.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton.
    • Sym­po­sium: Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop — not as nar­row as may first appear (Dou­glas Lay­cock and Thomas Berg, SCO­TUS­blog): “The Supreme Court has announced a pow­er­ful ide­al. Even when a law has no explic­it excep­tions, hos­tile enforce­ment is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Sin­gle-issue agen­cies that enforce state civ­il-rights laws must approach claims to reli­gious exemp­tions with tol­er­ance and respect. And this is appar­ent­ly an absolute rule; the court does not con­sid­er whether hos­til­i­ty might be jus­ti­fied by some state inter­est, com­pelling or oth­er­wise.”
    • Social Con­ser­vatism After Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop (Sohrab Ahmari, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Reduc­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs to a mat­ter of reli­gious free­dom car­ries oth­er risks. It allows pro­gres­sives to frame tra­di­tion­al posi­tions, which are root­ed in rea­son and nat­ur­al law, as a kind of idio­syn­crasy or super­sti­tion…. Defend­ing tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty on the basis of reli­gious lib­er­ty alone, in oth­er words, risks cor­ner­ing reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives in the long-term. The alter­na­tive, of course, isn’t to give up on reli­gious free­dom. That defen­sive bat­tle must con­tin­ue to be fought. But reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives should also go on the offen­sive and once more for­mu­late a sub­stan­tive pol­i­tics of the com­mon good.”
    • In Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop, Jus­tice Kennedy Strikes a Blow for the Dig­ni­ty of the Faith­ful (David French, Nation­al Review): “the Court did not issue the sweep­ing free-speech rul­ing that many advo­cates hoped for and oth­ers feared. Instead it issued a rul­ing that remind­ed state author­i­ties that peo­ple of faith have the exact same rights — and are enti­tled to the exact same treat­ment — as peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faith or no faith at all. And it did so in an opin­ion that deci­sive­ly reject­ed the exact talk­ing points so favored by the anti-reli­gious left.”
    • No Vic­to­ry For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (Darel E. Paul, First Things): “Only pro­found naïveté can spin the major­i­ty deci­sion as a vic­to­ry for reli­gious lib­er­ty.”
    • Against The Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop Killjoys (David French, Nation­al Review): a strong response to the above piece and a few oth­ers.
    • Why The Mas­ter­piece Rul­ing Is Tru­ly A Major Win For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (John East­man, The Fed­er­al­ist): “In short, Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop is the first post-Smith Free Exer­cise deci­sion where the Supreme Court applied strict scruti­ny to a neu­tral, gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble law that was not designed to tar­get reli­gion. Rather, strict scruti­ny was trig­gered because of how the law was applied against reli­gious objec­tors.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Col­lege and a senior fel­low at the Clare­mont Insti­tute.
    • This has not set­tled the issue, though. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Not A Piece of Cake (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “we have our first court rul­ing on reli­gious lib­er­ty since Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop. An Ari­zona appeals court even cit­ed the rul­ing in its own rul­ing against two Phoenix cal­lig­ra­phers who said that doing same-sex wed­ding invi­ta­tions was a vio­la­tion of their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed reli­gious beliefs.” This will no doubt be appealed, but is inter­est­ing nonethe­less. There is mas­sive hos­til­i­ty in some cir­cles against reli­gious free­dom in gen­er­al and specif­i­cal­ly against the free­dom of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians and tra­di­tion­al Catholics to pub­licly live as though their faith is true.
  4. In relat­ed news: Cross­Fit Just Fired Its Spokesper­son Who Said LGBT Pride Is A “Sin” (Stephanie M. Lee, Buz­zfeed): “Berg­er had also said, ‘The tac­tics of some in the LGBTQ move­ment toward dis­sent is an exis­ten­tial threat to free­dom of expres­sion.’ In response to a Twit­ter user who pushed back, he wrote, ‘Thank­ful­ly I work for a com­pa­ny that tol­er­ates dis­agree­ment. I have homo­sex­u­al cowork­ers who I love and respect, and as far as I am aware, they aren’t demand­ing I be pun­ished for my views.’”
    • In response, The Green­gro­cers Of Cross­Fit Gyms (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Gay activists and their sup­port­ers among the gym’s employ­ees destroyed this Christian’s busi­ness, not because he wouldn’t allow gays to work out at the gym, but because he would not per­mit them to cel­e­brate gay Pride there. They shat­tered his busi­ness overnight with­out fil­ing a charge or a law­suit, but sole­ly by using the pow­er of stig­ma and col­lec­tive action.”
  5. Read­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly (Ian Mar­cus Corbin, Week­ly Stan­dard): “I cur­rent­ly split my pro­fes­sion­al life between acad­e­mia and the Boston art world, the most lib­er­al cor­ners of the most lib­er­al state of the union. I can’t speak strong­ly enough about the beau­ty and kind­ness of the black, Jew­ish, His­pan­ic, gay, trans­gen­der, fem­i­nist, social­ist peo­ple whom I count as col­leagues and friends here. They are deep, sen­si­tive, search­ing souls. As a straight, white, able-bod­ied male, though—one who has even occa­sion­al­ly vot­ed for Republicans—I am, on paper, a per­fect storm of priv­i­lege and prej­u­dice. Per­haps shock­ing­ly, my col­leagues and I have man­aged to treat each oth­er with respect and at times even deep friend­ship and care.”
  6. Iden­ti­ty Ques­tions (Ron Bel­gau, Spir­i­tu­al Friend­ship): “ ‘Iden­ti­ty’ is bor­rowed from the sur­round­ing sec­u­lar cul­ture. It has dis­placed terms, like ‘nature’ and ‘call­ing,’ which have deep roots in the Bible and in the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian thought. This dis­place­ment has made it more dif­fi­cult for Chris­tians to think clear­ly about what it means to be trans­formed in Christ.” This is from sev­er­al years ago and was brought to my atten­tion via a Twit­ter thread. Bel­gau is a fas­ci­nat­ing guy — a for­mer soft­ware engi­neer turned philoso­pher who is attract­ed to oth­er men and is con­vinced those temp­ta­tions are sin­ful.
  7. When The Pun­ish­ment Feels Like A Crime (Julia Ioffe, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Dauber may be a hero to many Stan­ford stu­dents, but when I vis­it­ed the cam­pus in April, I dis­cov­ered that much of the fac­ul­ty does not feel the same way. Twen­ty-nine Stan­ford Law pro­fes­sors have signed a let­ter against the recall.” This is a long and amaz­ing arti­cle about the Per­sky recall cam­paign writ­ten before the vote.
    • Relat­ed: The recall of the judge who sen­tenced Brock Turn­er will end up hurt­ing poor, minor­i­ty defen­dants (Rachel Mar­shall, Vox): “…in this coun­try, we have an epi­dem­ic of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, yet nev­er have I heard of a pub­lic out­cry to recall or vote against a judge who presided over a case in which an inno­cent client was con­vict­ed or sen­tenced. In con­trast, as we have just seen, a sen­tence per­ceived as too light not only will make head­lines but could cost a judge his job.” The author is a Stan­ford Law School grad.
    • In case you missed it, Per­sky was recalled in the elec­tions this week.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • This guy is a chef in the White House (twit­ter). This is real. Google for “jacked White House chef.” Wow. Every out­landish action-adven­ture movie premise just became more plau­si­ble.
  • Great Chuck Nor­ris Facts (imgur): I know these jokes have been around for years… but some here are new to me. My favorite: “Chuck Nor­ris and Super­man once fought each oth­er on a bet. The los­er had to start wear­ing their under­wear on the out­side of their pants.”
  • Moron or Genius? (Pearls Before Swine)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay  built on this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2) This is one of the more impor­tant things I’ve shared. 

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 154

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bap­tist Apoc­a­lypse (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “We’re a long way from any final judg­ment on God’s pur­pos­es in the Trump era. But so far the Trump pres­i­den­cy has clear­ly been a kind of apoc­a­lypse — not (yet) in the ‘world-his­tor­i­cal calami­ty’ sense of the word, but in the orig­i­nal Greek mean­ing: an unveil­ing, an uncov­er­ing, an expo­sure of truths that had hereto­fore been hid­den.”
    • Relat­ed: On Gen­der, Pow­er, and Sin: The Evan­gel­i­cal #MeToo Moment (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “A the­o­log­i­cal and bib­li­cal way to say all this is that men’s dom­i­nance over women is a part of the Fal­l’s curse upon human­i­ty. The wound of sin upon gen­der rela­tions is clear in Gen­e­sis 3: ‘He will rule over you.’ So if that’s a part of the curse, why do evan­gel­i­cals think that build­ing the curse into the system–gender subordination–is going to pro­duce any­thing oth­er than cursed out­comes?” I wish the author spent more time build­ing the Bib­li­cal case for his per­spec­tive.
  2. A One Para­me­ter Equa­tion That Can Exact­ly Fit Any Scat­ter Plot (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Over­fit­ting is pos­si­ble with just one para­me­ter and so mod­els with few­er para­me­ters are not nec­es­sar­i­ly prefer­able even if they fit the data as well or bet­ter than mod­els with more para­me­ters.” Researchers take note.
    • The under­ly­ing math­e­mat­ics paper is well-writ­ten and inter­est­ing: One Para­me­ter Is Always Enough (Steven T. Pianta­dosi) — among oth­er things, it points out that you can smug­gle in arbi­trar­i­ly large amounts of data into an equa­tion through a sin­gle para­me­ter because a num­ber can have infi­nite dig­its.
  3. What I’ve Learned in Twen­ty Years of Mar­riage (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “My grand­moth­er wise­ly asked one night when I was final­ly going to ask ‘that girl from Ocean Springs’ to mar­ry me. I answered, ‘When I can afford it.’ She laughed. ‘Hon­ey, I mar­ried your grand­pa in the mid­dle of a Great Depres­sion,’ she said. ‘We made it work. Nobody can afford to get mar­ried. You just mar­ry, and make it work.’ Apart from the gospel, those were, and remain, the most lib­er­at­ing words I ever heard. I bought a ring that wouldn’t impress any­one, then or now, but we were head­ed for the altar. My only regret is that we aren’t today cel­e­brat­ing our twen­ty-first anniver­sary instead of our twen­ti­eth.” This is from a few years back and is full of wis­dom.
  4. Title IX Is Too Easy To Abuse (Cait­lyn Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “Is it pos­si­ble for two peo­ple to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sex­u­al­ly assault each oth­er? This is the question—rife with legal, anatom­i­cal, and emo­tion­al improbabilities—to which the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati now address­es itself, and with some urgency, as the insti­tu­tion and three of its employ­ees are cur­rent­ly being sued over an encounter that was sex­u­al for a brief moment, but that just as quick­ly entered the realm of eter­nal return. ”
  5. What­ev­er Hap­pened to Gifts of Lan­guage, Prophe­cy, and Heal­ing? (Andrew Wil­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “tak­ing a longer view by trac­ing our roots back to the ear­ly church fathers leads to some sur­pris­es. We dis­cov­er that some things, though rel­a­tive­ly unusu­al in recent times, are actu­al­ly very nor­mal across the broad­er sweep of human his­to­ry. Angels and demons would be an obvi­ous exam­ple. Or, more sur­pris­ing­ly, mirac­u­lous gifts.”
  6. I was Jor­dan Peterson’s strongest sup­port­er. Now I think he’s dan­ger­ous (Bernard Schiff, The Star): “When he was ren­o­vat­ing his house I invit­ed his fam­i­ly to live with mine. For five months, they occu­pied the third floor of our large house. We had meals togeth­er in the evening and long, colour­ful con­ver­sa­tions. There, away from cam­pus, I saw a man who was devot­ed to his wife and his chil­dren, who were love­ly and gen­tle and for whom I still feel affec­tion. He was atten­tive and thought­ful, stern and kind, play­ful and warm. His wife, Tam­my, appeared to be the keel, the bal­last and the rud­der, and Jor­dan ran the ship.” This is a long pro­file, by turns infor­ma­tive and puz­zling.
  7. The Evan­gel­i­cal Fight to Win Back Cal­i­for­nia (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “Though the state has one of the high­est per­cent­ages of reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed adults, the fast grow­ing reli­gious group in the coun­try, that large­ly blue sea is dot­ted with evan­gel­i­cal islands that are large­ly red. One in five adults in the state are evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter, and there are more megachurch­es in Cal­i­for­nia than in any oth­er state.” This arti­cle is most­ly about pol­i­tics, but is inter­est­ing nonethe­less.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 153

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Fed­er­al Agen­cies Lost Track of Near­ly 1,500 Migrant Chil­dren Placed With Spon­sors (Ron Nixon, New York Times): “…the agency had lost track of near­ly 1,500 migrant chil­dren it placed with spon­sors in the Unit­ed States, rais­ing con­cerns they could end up in the hands of human traf­fick­ers or be used as labor­ers by peo­ple pos­ing as rel­a­tives.” This is an arti­cle from April about kids who arrive alone at the bor­der, but I can’t help but think of it when I hear sto­ries about new poli­cies sep­a­rat­ing kids from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der. If I am read­ing this cor­rect­ly, they lost track of 20% of the minors they placed. Out­ra­geous­ly unac­cept­able. 
  2. The Wrath of God Poured Out — The Humil­i­a­tion of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (Albert Mohler, per­son­al blog): this is pure fire. I pray lead­ers in the Assem­blies of God will act with sim­i­lar courage should it become nec­es­sary.  
  3. What Our Iden­ti­ty Search­es Real­ly Reveal (Eric Park­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “the most sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion in under­stand­ing per­son­al iden­ti­ty is not ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Whose am I?’… This one turn of phrase might be the most sig­nif­i­cant turn of thought we could ever make. But since many of us haven’t made that turn of thought, we inhab­it con­struct­ed iden­ti­ties rather than received iden­ti­ties.”
  4. Chi­na’s social cred­it sys­tem has blocked peo­ple from tak­ing 11 mil­lion flights and 4 mil­lion train trips (Tara Fran­cis Chan, Busi­ness Insid­er): “a for­mer offi­cial, Hou Yunchun, is quot­ed as say­ing the sys­tem needs to be improved so ‘dis­cred­it­ed peo­ple become bank­rupt.’”
  5. Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Indi­vid­u­als have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” The author just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances.
  6. Mar­riage name game: What kind of guy would take his wife’s last name? (Phys.org): “[The study] found that among men with less than a high school degree, 10.3 per­cent report­ed chang­ing their sur­name. Among men with a high school degree but no col­lege, it was 3.6 per­cent, and among men with any col­lege, only 2 per­cent. None of the men sur­veyed who had an advanced degree changed their name.”
  7. The Racism Tread­mill (Cole­man Hugh­es, Quil­lette): “In an econ­o­my increas­ing­ly based on cog­ni­tive labor, it’s hard to imag­ine a cul­tur­al fea­ture more harm­ful than a social­ly-enforced taboo on aca­d­e­m­ic striv­ing. But wor­ries about the harm caused by the ‘act­ing white’ epi­thet have been met with skep­ti­cism by pro­gres­sives.” The author is an under­grad at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 152

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Love, Again: on a celi­bate breakup and what hap­pened after. (Wes­ley Hill, Com­ment Mag­a­zine): “For a long time, I found absti­nence rel­a­tive­ly easy. It’s not trendy to admit this, but I didn’t expe­ri­ence a sex­less adult­hood to be a fate worse than death, in part, per­haps, because I tried not to rev up my libido by see­ing how close I could get to the line of inter­course with­out step­ping over it…. What I didn’t real­ize, though, is that, for the inten­tion­al­ly absti­nent, giv­ing up sex is only part of the deal, and there’s more than one line you can step across.”
  2. Let’s Not For­get How Wrong Our Crime Data Are (Cathy O’Neil, Bloomberg): “A year after Trump was elect­ed, the num­ber of report­ed rapes among the Lati­no pop­u­la­tion of Hous­ton declined by 40 per­cent, a strong indi­ca­tion that peo­ple became afraid to report the crimes. Police often don’t take rape vic­tims’ reports seri­ous­ly, a prob­lem that is prob­a­bly even worse for male vic­tims. So how can we get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the under­ly­ing rate of crime? Sur­veys typ­i­cal­ly don’t help: Peo­ple who get away with com­mit­ting seri­ous offens­es aren’t like­ly to admit it, even if they’re guar­an­teed anonymi­ty. The one notable excep­tion is mar­i­jua­na use, which — though still ille­gal in most places — is mild and social­ly accept­able enough that peo­ple are will­ing to tell the truth. Hence, if we com­pare the report­ed rate of mar­i­jua­na use to the arrest data, we can gain some insight into how use­ful the lat­ter real­ly is. The pic­ture isn’t pret­ty. The lat­est gov­ern­ment sur­veys, for exam­ple, sug­gest that black and white Amer­i­cans use mar­i­jua­na at about the same rate. Yet blacks get arrest­ed about four times more often than whites — and 15 times more often in Man­hat­tan, accord­ing to a recent New York Times analy­sis.” The author has her Ph.D. in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. This week the US moved our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem on the 70th anniver­sary of Israel’s mod­ern instan­ti­a­tion. Vio­lence ensued.
    • Israel faces out­cry over Gaza killings dur­ing Jerusalem embassy protests (Oliv­er Holmes and Hazem Balousha, The Guardian): “Gaza has had its blood­i­est day in years on Mon­day after Israeli forces shot and killed 58 Pales­tini­ans and wound­ed at least 1,200 as tens of thou­sands protest­ed along the fron­tier against the open­ing of the US embassy in Jerusalem.”
    • The Real Dis­pute Dri­ving the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian Con­flict (Yos­si Klein Hale­vi, The Atlantic): “Abbas’s speech only con­firmed for many Israelis that this con­flict isn’t pri­mar­i­ly about redress­ing the Pales­tin­ian griev­ances over the con­se­quences of the events of 1967—the occu­pa­tion of the West Bank and Gaza—but of 1948: the cre­ation of Israel. Even if we were to uproot every last set­tle­ment and with­draw to the 1967 lines, some Israelis say, it won’t bring us any clos­er to peace, because the real Pales­tin­ian griev­ance is Israel’s exis­tence…. Israelis and Pales­tini­ans are caught in what could be called a “cycle of denial.” The Pales­tin­ian nation­al move­ment denies Israel’s legit­i­ma­cy, and Israel in turn denies the Pales­tini­ans’ nation­al sov­er­eign­ty. The cycle of denial has defined this shared exis­tence since the cre­ation of Israel 70 years ago.”
    • Pulling an arti­cle I first shared back in vol­ume 5: What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Atlantic): “…one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”
    • Israel’s Mas­sacre of Pales­tin­ian Civil­ians Should Spark Horror—and Action (Ian S. Lustick, The Nation): “As doc­u­ment­ed by the Israeli mil­i­tary, there are now more Pales­tini­ans under the con­trol of the Israeli state than there are Jews. Indeed, for all intents and pur­pos­es the Pales­tini­ans of Gaza and of the West Bank are already with­in the Jew­ish state. They are cit­i­zens of no oth­er coun­try, no oth­er rec­og­nized state. As mea­sured by how much impact the State of Israel has over the inti­mate details of their lives, and indeed over whether they will live at all, they are as much inhab­i­tants of the State of Israel as black slaves were inhab­i­tants of the Unit­ed States or as Africans in the Ban­tus­tans were inhab­i­tants of apartheid South Africa.” The author is a poli sci pro­fes­sor at Penn.
    • Israel Has the Right and Oblig­a­tion to Defend Its Bor­der with Dead­ly Force (David French, Nation­al Review): “What would you have Israel do when thou­sands of peo­ple march on the bor­der, some armed, some not? What would you have Israel do when you know that ter­ror­ists are cer­tain­ly mixed in that crowd, peo­ple who’d glad­ly shoot or stab Israeli civil­ians if they were ever to gain access to Israeli towns?”
  4. Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijack­ing Utopia (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex):  “I grudg­ing­ly for­give cap­i­tal­ism the mis­ery it caus­es, because it’s the engine that lifts coun­tries out of pover­ty. It’s a pre­con­di­tion for a free and pros­per­ous soci­ety; attempts to over­throw it have so con­sis­tent­ly led to pover­ty, tyran­ny, or geno­cide that we no longer believe its pro­po­nents’ earnest oaths that this time they’ve got it right. For right now, there’s no good alter­na­tive. But if we have a basic jobs guar­an­tee, it will cause all the same mis­ery, and I won’t for­give it.“ This is a long arti­cle — skim it. Over­all a very strong argu­ment.
  5. An athe­ist Mus­lim on what the left and right get wrong about Islam (Sean Illing, Vox): “I think the left has a blind spot when it comes to Islam and the right has a blind spot when it comes to Mus­lims.” This arti­cle is an inter­est­ing mix of insight and fol­ly.
  6. Inter­est­ing obser­va­tions from a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist (Cor­rinne McConaughy, Twit­ter): “How hard is it to reach into pol­i­tics and say simul­ta­ne­ous­ly that you are owed more and less than you have been giv­en? Like, that’s a hard argu­ment to make—so hard that the elites try­ing to explain this sort of ten­sion keep whiff­ing past it.” She is a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. I don’t know if she is a Chris­t­ian, but the way she word­ed that bit was very gospel­ish.
  7. The Fall of The Ger­man Empire (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “And think­ing about the Euro­pean Union this way, as a Ger­man­ic empire as well as a lib­er­al-cos­mopoli­tan project, is a help­ful way of under­stand­ing how it might ulti­mate­ly fall…. if the test of Europe’s uni­ty feels like a test for lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, it’s a mis­take to see it only in those terms. It is also a strug­gle of nations against empire, of the Continent’s small­er coun­tries against Ger­man mas­tery and North­ern Euro­pean inter­ests, in which pop­ulist par­ties are being elect­ed to resist poli­cies the cen­ter sought to impose upon the periph­ery with­out a vote.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 151

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. These Bombs Led Me To Christ (Kim Phuc Phan Thi, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You have seen my pic­ture a thou­sand times. It’s a pic­ture that made the world gasp—a pic­ture that defined my life. I am nine years old, run­ning along a pud­dled road­way in front of an expres­sion­less sol­dier, arms out­stretched, naked, shriek­ing in pain and fear, the dark con­tour of a napalm cloud bil­low­ing in the dis­tance.” WHOA.
  2. If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. What Hap­pened To Alan Der­showitz? (Evan Man­dery, Politi­co Mag­a­zine): “Talk­ing to him, it’s not hard to get the impres­sion that expos­ing that truth—the hypocrisy of both sides—may be his ulti­mate project. As he sees it, the best way to achieve his goal—and to get it the atten­tion it deserves—is by defend­ing the most odi­ous clients in the most provoca­tive pos­si­ble way on the very prin­ci­ples lib­er­als claim to love.” I real­ly liked this arti­cle.
  4. A Mus­lim Among Israeli Set­tlers (Waja­hat Ali, The Atlantic): “Ever since the cre­ation of the mod­ern state of Israel—a mir­a­cle for the Jews, the Nak­ba (‘cat­a­stro­phe’) for the Palestinians—Jerusalem’s dai­ly weath­er fore­cast could be described as sun­ny with a slight chance of apoc­a­lypse.”
  5. Give Amnesty for Col­lege Writ­ings (David Lat, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Col­le­giate scrib­blings from decades ago should have no bear­ing on one’s fit­ness for pub­lic office, and mak­ing an issue of them is bad for the coun­try. Col­lege is tra­di­tion­al­ly a time of exper­i­men­ta­tion and explo­ration. We adopt and dis­card ideas and try out dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties, some­times in rapid suc­ces­sion. These iden­ti­ties often bear lit­tle resem­blance to our mature selves— Hillary Clin­ton was once a ‘Gold­wa­ter girl,’ while Clarence Thomas was a Black Pan­ther sympathizer—but explor­ing them is how we learn about our­selves and acquire wisdom—how we grow up.”
    • Speak­ing of col­lege writ­ings, here are two pieces by Stan­ford stu­dents. They are pre­sent­ed with­out any impli­ca­tion that these are views the authors will lat­er recant; rather, by putting them here as sub-bul­let points I can tell myself I lim­it­ed myself to sev­en top­ics this week.
    • Think the Right Cares About Free Speech? Not Always. (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “With­in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, free­dom of speech is a top­ic of great self-right­eous­ness on both fronts. As the Left adopts an increas­ing­ly politi­cized def­i­n­i­tion of ‘hate speech,’ includ­ing even the most mun­dane top­ics like ‘microag­gres­sions,’ the Right pats itself on the back for defend­ing nat­ur­al lib­er­ties. Yet in Poland, where pro­gres­sives have been vot­ed almost entire­ly out of gov­ern­ment, the Right instead restricts the speech of the Left.” That’s our very own Anni­ka.
    • The Orig­i­nal Sin of Stan­ford Din­ing (Andrew Fried­man, Stan­ford Review): “Cur­rent­ly 12 admin­is­tra­tors run R&DE, along with numer­ous assis­tants. If admin­is­tra­tors object to turn­ing the school’s food ser­vice into a land­lord, it is like­ly because they know leas­ing space to third par­ty ven­dors, besides being bet­ter for every­one else, could be done by a sin­gle per­son, with­out the bureau­crat­ic bloat of the cur­rent sys­tem.”
  6. A real-life Lord of the Flies: the trou­bling lega­cy of the Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment (David Shari­at­madari, The Guardian): “The ‘Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment’ is con­sid­ered sem­i­nal by social psy­chol­o­gists, still one of the best-known exam­ples of ‘real­is­tic con­flict the­o­ry’. It is often cit­ed in mod­ern research. But was it sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous? And why were the results of the Mid­dle Grove exper­i­ment – where the researchers couldn’t get the boys to fight – sup­pressed? … [The researcher’s method was] think of the the­o­ry first and then find a way to get the results that match it. If the results say some­thing else? Bury them.”
  7. A Design Lab Is Mak­ing Rit­u­als for Sec­u­lar Peo­ple (Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic): “Rit­u­al Design Lab has its roots in Stanford’s Insti­tute of Design, where Ozenc and Hagan both teach. In 2015, they pro­posed a new course on rit­u­al design. To their sur­prise, more than 100 stu­dents signed up. Most were sec­u­lar.” I large­ly agree with Rod Dreher’s take: New Rit­u­als For Self-Wor­ship

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 150

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Crim­i­nal Gang Used a Drone Swarm To Obstruct an FBI Hostage Raid (Patrick Tuck­er, Defense One): “Nefar­i­ous use of drones is like­ly to get worse before it gets bet­ter, accord­ing to sev­er­al gov­ern­ment offi­cials who spoke on the pan­el. There is no easy or quick tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion.” Fas­ci­nat­ing stuff.
  2. The Sharp Sting of the Baby­lon Bee (Mark Hem­ing­way, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “It’s safe to say that thus far, to the extent it has noticed, sec­u­lar Amer­i­ca is con­found­ed by the suc­cess of the Baby­lon Bee.”
  3. The Sex­u­al Revolution’s Angry Chil­dren (Kay Hymowitz, City Jour­nal): “What [old­er fem­i­nists] don’t fac­tor into their judg­ment is that they ben­e­fit­ed from the lin­ger­ing cul­tur­al cap­i­tal of ear­li­er, more man­ner­ly gen­er­a­tions. Long-estab­lished courtship norms don’t dis­ap­pear overnight, after all…. The sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion stripped young women of the social sup­port they need to play gate­keep­er, just as it deprived men of a pos­i­tive vision, or even a rea­son, for self-restraint. Rec­og­niz­ing those loss­es is where any ref­or­ma­tion has to start.”
  4. Addi­tion­al thoughts on the tragedy of Alfie Evans:
    • King Solomon, The False Moth­er, and Alfie Evans (Devo­rah Gold­man, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “Like King Solomon, the courts in Eng­land were pre­sent­ed with a straight­for­ward ques­tion: To whom does this child belong? To Solomon, the true par­ent was unques­tion­ably the one will­ing to sac­ri­fice for the child, to safe­guard his life even at the expense of nev­er see­ing him again.” 🔥 🔥 🔥
    • A more tem­per­ate, insight­ful argu­ment: The Alfie Evans case shows lib­er­al indi­vid­u­al­ism has gone too far (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “[This case illus­trates] the dan­ger of let­ting the cen­turies-long progress of lib­er­al indi­vid­u­al­ism go too far in break­ing open the fam­i­ly and assign­ing its func­tions to the state… After all, the irra­tional, over­pow­er­ing love of par­ent for child is the only rea­son most of us are alive, despite hav­ing spent the first years of our life vom­it­ing, soil­ing our­selves and destroy­ing every­thing we could reach. If that love can see us to a healthy adult­hood, it can prob­a­bly see us to a decent death.”
    • Alfie Evans and the Experts (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…a decent soci­ety allows fam­i­lies lee­way to defy med­ical con­sen­sus: not only for the sake of parental rights and reli­gious beliefs, not only because bias­es around race and class and faith creep into med­ical deci­sion-mak­ing, but also because in hard cas­es the offi­cial med­ical con­sen­sus often doesn’t come close to grasp­ing all the pos­si­bil­i­ties, and let­ting peo­ple go their own way is often the only way to dis­cov­er where it’s wrong.”
  5. The Redis­tri­b­u­tion of Sex (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…our wide­spread iso­la­tion and unhap­pi­ness and steril­i­ty might be dealt with by reviv­ing or adapt­ing old­er ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chasti­ty and per­ma­nence and the spe­cial respect owed to the celi­bate. But this is not the nat­ur­al response for a soci­ety like ours. Instead we tend to look for fix­es that seem to build on pre­vi­ous rev­o­lu­tions, rather than reverse them.” An excel­lent fol­low-up to last week’s bul­let point 7.
  6. Three arti­cles about evan­gel­i­cals and pol­i­tics:
    • The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” I agree with Kevin’s sev­en points to an almost shock­ing extent. We’ve nev­er met but it’s like we had a long, ram­bling con­ver­sa­tion and both came to the same con­clu­sions.
    • Trump’s lat­est appeal to evan­gel­i­cals: a new office to pro­tect reli­gious lib­er­ty (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, Vox): “Trump’s ini­tia­tive seems to expand pre­vi­ous offices’ remit in a num­ber of ways. For starters, the office isn’t just focus­ing on com­mu­ni­ty-based or char­i­ta­ble ini­tia­tives. Accord­ing to the Reli­gion News Ser­vice, it’s also charged with inform­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of ‘any fail­ures of the exec­u­tive branch to com­ply with reli­gious lib­er­ty pro­tec­tions under law.’ The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has con­sis­tent­ly been a cham­pi­on of reli­gious lib­er­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly inso­far as it per­tains to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian caus­es…. The reach of this office also seems broad­er than its pre­de­ces­sors. Unlike in oth­er admin­is­tra­tions, the office will work with all gov­ern­ment agen­cies, even those with­out depart­ment-spe­cif­ic faith-based ini­tia­tives.”
    • An Open Let­ter to Trump’s Evan­gel­i­cal Defend­ers (David French, Nation­al Review): “We are not told that the ends of good poli­cies jus­ti­fy silence in the face of sin. Indeed — and this mes­sage goes out specif­i­cal­ly to the politi­cians and pun­dits who go on tele­vi­sion and say things they do not believe (you know who you are) to pro­tect this admin­is­tra­tion and to pre­serve their pres­ence in the halls of the pow­er — there is spe­cif­ic scrip­ture that applies to you: ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put dark­ness for light and light for dark­ness, who put bit­ter for sweet and sweet for bit­ter!’”
  7. What Democ­rats Don’t Under­stand About Con­sumers (Mor­gan Orta­gus & Chris­tos Makridis, Fox Busi­ness): yup. That’s our own Chris­tos. Here’s the part that stood out the most to me: “Chris­tos Makridis is a PhD can­di­date at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, a Dig­i­tal Fel­low at the MIT Sloan Ini­tia­tive on the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my, and a non-res­i­dent fel­low at the Har­vard Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment Cyber Secu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive.” WHAAAT? If you didn’t catch that, he’s con­cur­rent­ly con­nect­ed to Stan­ford, Har­vard, and MIT.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every­thing That’s Wrong Of Rac­coons (Mal­lo­ry Ort­berg, The Toast): “Once when my dog died a pas­sel of rac­coons showed up in the back­yard as if to say ‘Now that he’s gone, we own the night,’ and they didn’t flinch when I yelled at them, and I found it dis­re­spect­ful to 1) me per­son­al­ly and 2) the entire flow of the food chain. Don’t dis­re­spect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.” (first shared in vol­ume 97)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 149

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Ugly Cod­ed Cri­tique of Chick-Fil-A’s Chris­tian­i­ty (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “A few years ago, a well-known pro­gres­sive com­men­ta­tor mused to his large Twit­ter fol­low­ing that some­times he wish­es all the Chris­tians would just dis­ap­pear. I would like to believe he was sim­ply too unin­formed to real­ize that he was wish­ing for a whiter world.” This arti­cle makes an impor­tant point that you may find use­ful in cam­pus dis­cus­sions. It is in response to the very odd Chick-Fil‑A’s Creepy Infil­tra­tion Of New York City (Dan Piepen­bring, New York­er). Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus.
  2. Church Of The Don­ald (Ruth Gra­ham, Politi­co): “Trump per­son­al­ly has appeared 11 times on CBN since his cam­paign began; in 2017 alone, he gave more inter­views to CBN than to CNN, ABC or CBS…. Chris­t­ian broad­cast­ers offer an unmedi­at­ed chan­nel to the liv­ing rooms of a remark­ably wide swath of Amer­i­can believ­ers, an audi­ence more polit­i­cal­ly and racial­ly diverse than you might expect. TBN alone has more local sta­tions to its name than Fox or the three major net­works.” Insight­ful and rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. When the Rohingya Came, This Chris­t­ian Hos­pi­tal Was Ready (Sarah Eekhof Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this is a grip­ping sto­ry and dif­fi­cult to excerpt. Wow.
  4. Alfie Evans and Our Moral Cross­roads (Charles Camosy, First Things): “Alfie Evans’s death is being aimed by the very peo­ple whose voca­tion it is to help and pro­tect him. The dif­fer­ence in Alfie’s case is that, because he has con­tin­ued to breathe, the pre­tense of ‘removal of bur­den­some treat­ment’ is patent­ly absurd. In a sit­u­a­tion that was no doubt dis­tress­ing to those who hoped he would die, Alfie’s con­tin­u­ing to breathe has clar­i­fied the true object of the act of remov­ing his ven­ti­la­tor.” The more I read about this case the angri­er I become.
  5. Alan Jacobs: a Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­al for the inter­net age (David J. Michael, Amer­i­ca): “…he was pub­lish­ing schol­ar­ly work with­in his field but was increas­ing­ly devot­ing time to writ­ing essays and the­o­log­i­cal pieces for Chris­t­ian mag­a­zines and jour­nals. Switch­ing back and forth could be dis­ori­ent­ing, and he spent sev­er­al years debat­ing and pray­ing about which audi­ence he should focus on. ‘At one point, I just had an epiphany: You don’t get to choose.You’re gonna have to write for your schol­ar­ly peers, and you’re gonna have to write for your fel­low Chris­tians because you have things to say to both audi­ences. So, that means, you got­ta learn to code switch.’” I am a big fan of Alan Jacobs’ writ­ing.
  6. Dear Human­i­ties Profs: We Are The Prob­lem (Eric Ben­nett, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Three gen­er­a­tions ago, lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors exchanged a rig­or­ous­ly defined sphere of exper­tise, to which they could speak with author­i­ty, for a much wider field to which they could speak with vir­tu­al­ly no pow­er at all…. Lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors have affect­ed Amer­i­ca more by sleep­ing in its down­town hotels and eat­ing in its fast-food restau­rants than by telling one anoth­er where real prospects for free­dom lay. ” Oof. That’s a sol­id blow, right there. The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Prov­i­dence Col­lege.
  7. Uncan­ny Vul­vas (Diana Fleis­chman, Jaco­bite Mag­a­zine): “Video games and social media already under­mine the native psy­cho­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms that make us work towards sta­tus — they sup­ply more imme­di­ate rewards and take far less effort than any­thing we work towards out in the real world. Sex robots are only going to make that worse, espe­cial­ly for young men.” Def­i­nite­ly not a Chris­t­ian arti­cle. From a some­what relat­ed Chris­t­ian stand­point: The Eco­nom­ics of Sex­u­al Puri­ty (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog).

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.